Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Carolyn Kuhl denied motions for a new trial on Tuesday, according to court documents.

The ruling means a March jury verdict awarding $6 million in damages will remain in place while both companies pursue appeals.

The case was brought by a 20-year-old California woman identified in court records as K.G.M., also known as Kaley.

She told jurors she began using YouTube at the age of six and Instagram at nine, and later developed anxiety, depression, body dysmorphia and suicidal thoughts.

Her lawyers argued that features built into the platforms, including algorithmic recommendations, beauty filters, endless scrolling and push notifications, encouraged compulsive use and contributed to her mental health issues.

After hearing the evidence, the jury found both companies negligent and concluded they acted with malice, oppression and fraud.

Jurors awarded $3 million in compensatory damages and a further $3 million in punitive damages, bringing the total award to $6 million.

Meta was assigned 70% of the liability, amounting to $4.2 million, while YouTube was held responsible for the remaining 30%, or $1.8 million.

The trial attracted attention because it was the first to reach a verdict among more than 1,600 related lawsuits filed across the United States by young people, families and school districts.

The litigation accuses social media companies of designing products that encourage addiction among children and teenagers while contributing to mental health problems.

Several senior technology executives testified during the proceedings. Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg spent about eight hours on the witness stand and was questioned about internal company documents showing that Instagram had four million users under the age of 13 in 2015.

Instagram head Adam Mosseri also testified and acknowledged that spending 16 hours a day on the platform could be “problematic.”

Meta said it “respectfully disagrees” with the verdict and plans to appeal. The company argued that teenage mental health is influenced by many factors and cannot be linked to a single app.

Google, which owns YouTube, also intends to challenge the ruling. The company argued that the case “misunderstands YouTube” because it views the service as a streaming platform rather than a social media network.

As it stands, lawmakers and child safety advocates are currently pushing for stronger protections for young users online, including uncompromising age-verification requirements, expanded parental management and changes to platform design.

Elon Musk’s AI startup, xAI, has sued Apple and OpenAI, accusing them of conspiring to shut out rivals in the fast-growing artificial intelligence market.

The lawsuit, filed in a Texas federal court on 25 August, is the latest escalation in Elon Musk’s long-running disagreement with OpenAI and its CEO, Sam Altman.

According to the complaint, Apple has given OpenAI an unfair advantage by integrating ChatGPT into iPhones, iPads, and Macs while sidelining Musk’s xAI products, including the Grok chatbot. 

xAI claims that Apple manipulates App Store rankings to exclude Grok from its curated lists, despite the app’s high user ratings. Musk himself reinforced this point on X, writing: “A million reviews with 4.9 average for @Grok and still Apple refuses to mention Grok on any lists.”

The lawsuit alleges that Apple’s dominance in the smartphone market, holding roughly 65% in the United States, combined with OpenAI’s estimated 80% control of the generative AI chatbot market, has created what Musk calls a “duopoly.” 

Lawyers for xAI argue that this exclusive arrangement violates U.S. antitrust law, particularly Sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act. The company is seeking billions of dollars in damages.

OpenAI, in response, dismissed the filing, saying: “This latest filing is consistent with Mr. Musk’s ongoing pattern of harassment.” Apple has so far declined to comment.

Legal experts say the case could become a watershed moment for how American courts define the AI market and apply competition law to emerging technologies. Christine Bartholomew, a law professor at the University at Buffalo, described it as “a canary in the coal mine in terms of how courts will treat AI, and treat antitrust and AI.”

Musk’s issue with OpenAI is not new. He co-founded the company in 2015 but left three years later after disagreements over its direction. Since then, he has repeatedly criticised its shift from nonprofit to for-profit, even filing a separate lawsuit to block the move. Earlier this year, Musk attempted to buy OpenAI outright for $97.4 billion, an offer the company rejected.

Beyond the fight, Musk is pursuing ambitions for xAI and his social media platform X. He envisions turning them into a “super app,” combining social networking, payments, and AI tools in a model similar to China’s WeChat. 

Experts say Apple’s partnership with OpenAI could be seen as an attempt to neutralise that threat by locking users into its ecosystem.

The case draws comparisons to the U.S. government’s antitrust issue with Google, which centred on exclusive search deals with Apple.

Filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, the complaint goes beyond intellectual property theft as Fintiv claims that Apple engaged in corporate racketeering, deliberately lifting confidential innovations from CorFire, a mobile wallet solutions provider Fintiv acquired in 2014. 

According to the lawsuit, Apple breached nondisclosure agreements and also recruited CorFire staff to facilitate the development of Apple Pay, which was launched globally in 2014.

The issue dates back to 2011 and 2012, when Apple allegedly held a series of meetings with CorFire and entered into non-disclosure agreements to explore licensing discussions. 

Rather than formalise a deal, Apple is accused of using those sessions to extract technical knowledge and later build its own product without compensation or credit.

“This is a case of corporate theft and racketeering of monumental proportions,” the suit reads. “Apple has generated billions of dollars in revenue without paying Fintiv a single penny.”

Fintiv’s legal team, led by veteran lawyer Marc Kasowitz, isn’t pulling any punches. In a statement accompanying the filing, Kasowitz declared: “This is one of the most egregious examples of corporate malfeasance I’ve seen in 45 years of legal practice.”

The lawsuit alleges violations of both federal and state-level statutes, including the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, Georgia’s state equivalent of the RICO statute, the Defend Trade Secrets Act, and Georgia’s Trade Secret Act. Apple stands as the sole defendant in the case.

A key element of Fintiv’s argument is that Apple formed what it calls an “association-in-fact enterprise” with top-tier banks and credit card companies, including JPMorgan Chase, Citibank, Bank of America, Visa, Mastercard, and American Express, to profit off the stolen technology. 

Fintiv insists these institutions have benefitted from Apple Pay transaction fees while being part of an informal commercial ecosystem rooted in misappropriated technology.

CorFire, originally based in Alpharetta, Georgia, developed mobile wallet infrastructure long before Apple’s first foray into the space. The lawsuit asserts that the similarities between CorFire’s proprietary solutions and the structure of Apple Pay are not coincidental, but the result of intentional reverse engineering of CorFire’s work.

Again, this new filing follows a separate legal setback for Fintiv. On August 4, a federal judge in Austin, Texas, dismissed a related patent infringement case Fintiv had filed against Apple. Fintiv has indicated plans to appeal that decision but appears to be moving its focus to the Georgia court, where CorFire’s legacy and intellectual property were originally based.

While Apple has yet to issue a public response, the case is already drawing attention due to its potential financial and reputational implications. Apple Pay remains a central component of the company’s services division, which has become a major revenue stream.

The lawsuit is registered as Fintiv Inc v Apple Inc, U.S. District Court, Northern District of Georgia, No. 25-04413.

This case points to a more serious legal confrontation over how tech giants interact with smaller firms, especially in early-stage collaborations that never formalise into partnerships. 

Fintiv says Apple has followed this same pattern in other disputes, pointing to ongoing claims involving Masimo and Valencell, whose health-tracking technologies allegedly influenced the development of the Apple Watch.

The tech company filed its appeal with the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, aiming to overturn a decision that could alter how developers operate within its iOS ecosystem.

The appeal comes in response to U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers’ April 30 decision, which held Apple in contempt for defying a 2021 injunction. 

The original order was intended to prevent Apple from obstructing app developers from directing users to alternative, often cheaper, payment options outside the App Store.

Judge Gonzalez Rogers did not mince words in her ruling. “Apple sought to maintain a revenue stream worth billions in direct defiance of this court’s injunction,” she wrote. She refused Apple’s request to pause the enforcement of her decision, accusing the company of deliberate noncompliance and misleading conduct.

The judge referred Apple and one of its senior executives to the U.S. Department of Justice for a possible criminal contempt investigation—an unusual escalation in corporate litigation that signals the severity of the court’s view on Apple’s conduct.

Apple has rejected the court’s claims, asserting that its App Store rules were not in violation of the injunction and are aimed at ensuring safety and maintaining user trust. In its notice of appeal, Apple did not publicly disclose its full legal reasoning but confirmed that it would challenge the contempt finding in detail.

At the core of the case is a 2020 lawsuit filed by Epic Games, creator of Fortnite, which accused Apple of monopolistic behaviour by restricting developers’ access to third-party payment systems and charging what it described as unreasonable fees. 

The company claimed that Apple’s policies gave it unfair control over app distribution and in-app commerce on iPhones and iPads.

Following the contempt ruling, Apple was ordered to eliminate new practices that the judge deemed obstructive. This included a controversial 27% commission imposed on developers when users completed purchases outside the App Store—a tactic the court viewed as undermining the spirit of the original injunction. 

The judge also banned the use of warning prompts, often labelled “scare screens,” which Apple displayed to dissuade users from using alternative payment options.

The ruling has triggered immediate ripple effects across the tech industry. Companies such as Spotify, which had long criticised Apple’s grip on app payments, are reportedly adjusting their in-app user experiences to embrace the new legal framework and allow external payments.

Neither Apple nor Epic Games responded to media inquiries at the time of filing this report.

The outcome of this appeal carries significant implications for the digital economy. Should Apple fail to overturn the ruling, the decision could reshape how major platforms manage their app marketplaces, setting a precedent that other jurisdictions may follow. 

Meanwhile, the prospect of a criminal contempt probe adds further issues to Apple’s legal standing.